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#46; the 8 way record claim was for a 64-bit JVM. The PowerPC result you reference was for a 32-bit JVM. specjbb stresses the memory architecture heavily (there's no I/O); the submitted result from IBM include a machine with 64GB of RAM, while the Sun Opteron box had 16GB, and they are running different JVM versions. If you look at the lower numbered runs you'll notice they're pretty close (the Opteron being slightly ahead), but that it hits it's wall much earlier due to significantly less RAM.Reply

Den: Very true but recall that our previous test was done on Opteron 850s instead of Opteron 852s. The 852 performs a bit better than th 850.

opus13i: We have been stuckin MI redtape land for some time. It wouldn't make sense to change the benchmark at this point either because our previous tests used the 32-bit single core solution. Since they don't seem to have much desire to provide us with the correct license we will probably drop that benchmark in favor of something a little more versatile.

I dont care who made the hardware, its a hell of a machine. I wish Intel had to rely on inovation and good products to survive like AMD does. Intel really doesn't have many products capable of out performing AMDs equivalent anymore. Reply

Did you even bother to check with mental images? With a simple phone call you could have had the proper licensing in place for 8 cores, as well as every possible variation of 64bit possible.

"We include Mental Ray and Shake as a point of reference, although both applications are strictly 32-bit at this time. Mental Ray is further hindered by the fact that the version we have is not SMP-aware."

way to go detective, i dont suppose you actually looked at teh specifications did you?

Interesting article, I am confused why you are dissapointed in the GCC complile time though. The dual core machine took 369 seconds (with 9 jobs) and the single took 603.18 seconds (with 5 jobs). 603.18/369=1.635 or 63.5% faster which is well in the 50-80% range. Your article says 43% faster, so maybe the GCC compile conclusion is based on a typo?Reply

I saw the title to the PS3/XBOX article. It was a different one than the original article from last week. I clicked on it to read it and nothing showed up. It was an article critical of the CPU's on the two systems I believe. Matbe Anand find some insider stuff that was only limited to a few people inside MS. If so, I think the potential rewards of protecting the source is much better long term than getting them in trouble and burning a bridge. Along with the long term effects of insiders trusting Anand.Reply

You can no longer get v20z via ebay. I managed to buy a half-dozen of them for $1200-$1500 each, although I admit I had to collude with another buyer to do so. Probably Sun has enough traction with the v\d+z series that they no longer need the eBay channel.

The only beef I have with the v-series is Sun can ben recalcitrant about supplying the voltage regulator modules. In the v20z there are four removable VRMs and if you bought a single-CPU machine, you only get 2. Additional VRMs sell in pairs for $175 but the lead time is indeterminant and sometimes very long.Reply

It would be nice if other Opteron-builders would add to the test so we can get an idea of how well the Opteron is implemented.

I'd say webspace is best served with dualcore Opterons. 90% gain! Holy moly!

#23 I have worked as a temporary at Sun in The Netherlands in 1987 when they were about to release their 4/ series. Their 3/ machines were already considered top notch then. They offered workstations with an optical mouse that moved over a special gridpad and full color screens. That was really something special then. No AMD CPUs at that time.

To be perfectly honest as well, I also didn't know them before I worked there ;-)Reply

Wow, I wish my company had a use for a system like that. I'd take a paycut just to be able to play with it for a while... damned fine enginering on both Sun and AMD's part. And to be prefectly honest, I never really payed Sun that much attention until they started using AMD procs. Everyone else needs to get with the program and give AMD the market share they deserve...oh wait...I'll stop there.Reply

"It's also interesting to note the difference between Solaris 10 and SLES 9 here. As the threads increased, there was a wider gap between performance of the Solaris configuration and the SLES configuration in favor of Solaris."

The graph on that page shows the opposite, with SLES outperforming Solaris.Reply

Does anyone know if the v20zs were dual core-capable? I heard that if you negotiate with sun (go to sun's ebay sale for the v20z), you can get really good deals. I'd love to just get two 270s if/when the prices come down. Reply

Without much pressure from Intel, Sun has been pretty free to do what they want with AMD's processors. Sun is even going a bit on the offensive with Intel trade-in programs. Even though both AMD and Sun have been through some hard times recently, Sun is a great ally for AMD for two reasons; first, Sun knows servers - this is a critical market for AMD. Second, Sun isn't afraid of Intel and doesn't have nearly the problems AMD does with their customers.

HEhuehueh... that's the reason why Sun server is still the best AMD server out there. HP and IBM should learn from them on how to build a good Opteron server.Anyway, Cray implementation of Opteron is still unmatched.Reply

One question, why the lack of apples to apples os comparison between the two systems? You talk about S10 for two pages yet you dont list it as being tested on the Dual Core machine. That and you do not use the same linux versions on the two machines.

To me that makes this comparison a whole lot less usefull. Granted, the perf should not vary to much between SuSE 9 and 9.1 but to not include S10 in the Dual Core comparo seems kinda silly.Reply

AMD doesn't have "problems with it's customers" at all. AMD has problems with Intel's illegal Biz practices which have prevented many AMD customers from selling AMD products. With any luck HP, Sony and a Helleva lot of other PC companies will finally put Intel execs in prison where they belong. And you can bet all the companies that have been blackmailed by Intel will be a LOT more interested in selling AMD products now that the shit has hit the fan and they can come out of hiding.Reply

Is it just me, or is it normal to have problems reading anything but the first page? When I click to go to the next page, it just brings up the "article search" box. The print version also doesn't work.

Using Firefox on linux. All extensions were disabled for the purpose of troubleshooting, with the same response.

As it is right now, even clicking the article results in the "Article Search" box, rather then the article. I was able to read the first page about 5 min ago, though.Reply